AMD demos Fusion-based Llano 'APU' at press event

AMD has showed off some of the first fully functional samples of its upcoming “Llano” APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) at a couple of recent press events in Los Angeles and Taiwan. The company wasn’t ready to share much in terms of specific clock frequencies or model numbers, but offered a quick demo of the chip’s multitasking capabilities by playing a high-definition video while running a DirectCompute-enabled celestial body simulation and a four-way instance of HyperPi.

Video playback went without a hitch despite the fact that both the GPU and CPU portions of Llano were under heavy use simultaneously. AMD also showed off a demo scene from Alien vs. Predator running rather smoothly with DirectX 11 settings enabled at a modest screen resolution of 1024x768. Legit Reviews has some pictures of the AMD development board used for the demo. And while they weren’t allowed to show the Llano chip itself or any real up close pictures, they did note that it was running cool compared other processors.

For those unfamiliar with Llano, it is a 32nm “Fusion” product that consolidates a DX11 graphics processor, four Phenom II-derived CPU cores and Northbridge functions on a single die. The first Llano chips are expected to make its way into mainstream notebooks and desktops by mid-2011, while AMD's first Fusion offering, the Bobcat-based Brazos APU is reportedly still on track to break into the netbook world in the "first part of 2011."